Security robots compared: types, costs and limits

A security robot is a patrol machine or a camera system that watches a site and sends what it sees to a person. Most are sold as a yearly service and few have a public price. Asylon is one published example at about $120,000 to $170,000 a year for robot patrols, and one drone maker gives a running cost of $4 to $7 an hour. None of the products on this page arrests anyone or makes the final decision about a threat, because a person still does that.

Prices checked in November 2026. They change often; check the linked pages.

Why sites are buying them

About 1.3 million people work as security guards in the United States, and the job is hard to keep filled. A UC Berkeley Labor Center report from July 2026 found that annual turnover in the security industry reached 89% in 2024, against a private-sector average of 66%.

Business Insider reported in August 2026 that some of Asylon's customers have used its robots so they could leave an otherwise vacant guard post unfilled. In the same article, the Labor Center researcher said the realistic near-term effect is that guards are not replaced.

The kinds of security robot on sale today

Outdoor patrol robots

Knightscope lists the K5 as available for parking lots, campuses and walkways, with 360-degree HD video and thermal imaging. Its larger K7 is in limited release for logistics hubs and industrial sites, and Knightscope says it detects people, vehicles and license plates. A Knightscope article says the K5 patrols for 1 to 1.5 hours on a charge and then recharges for about 30 minutes.

SMP Robotics makes the Argus S5.3 patrol robot, which is rated IP65 against dust and water and works from -20°C to +55°C. SMP says it detects and tracks people and sends alerts to an operator. Its latest news item is from October 2026.

Asylon sells DroneDog, a four-legged ground robot built on the Spot platform from Boston Dynamics. Asylon said in July 2025 that DroneDog had patrolled more than 150,000 miles.

Indoor patrol robots

Cobalt AI lists the Cobalt Robot for autonomous security patrol, with patrol routes, anomaly detection and alerts that go into its monitoring platform. A Cobalt release describes the robots as built to patrol indoor facilities with more than 60 sensors, including thermal sensors and badge readers.

We could confirm only one active maker of indoor patrol robots from its own pages, so this list is short.

Security drones

Sunflower Labs makes the Beehive, a drone that lives in a base station and flies out on a schedule, on demand, or when a sensor triggers it. The company says its AI detects people, vehicles and animals and does not perform facial recognition. Most countries require a pilot in command, who can be the customer or a remote piloting service.

Asylon's Guardian drone carries day and thermal cameras for perimeter sweeps and alarm response. Its base station swaps the battery in less than 3 minutes, and FAA-certified operators watch each mission.

Remote video guarding

Remote video guarding, also called virtual guarding, uses fixed cameras and software that flags activity so that a remote guard can look and act.

Deep Sentinel says its guards speak through the camera's two-way audio, sound a siren and contact local police, and that it contacts police within 30 seconds of a threat appearing on camera.

ECAM, formed in 2025 from Stealth Monitoring and ECAMSECURE, offers 24/7 live video monitoring from fixed cameras and from solar-powered mobile towers. Its operators verify what the AI flags, sound alarms and contact law enforcement.

Cobalt's Command Center does the same for door alarms and cameras inside buildings.

How much does a security robot cost?

Few vendors publish a price, so the table has only the figures and price models we could confirm.

For comparison, Asylon's chief executive told Business Insider that a fully loaded guard post covered 24 hours a day costs about a quarter of a million dollars a year at the national average. It is a vendor's figure, so compare it with local quotes.

What they detect and what they do not do

Security robots are good at repeated, boring coverage. They see people and vehicles, read license plates, pick up heat with thermal cameras, and record what happened.

Deciding what counts as a threat is still left to a person. Asylon's chief executive told Business Insider that its robots drive about 90% of a typical patrol themselves, that remote operators take over at crosswalks and doorways, and that a person checks every threat. Knightscope writes that "human personnel remain essential, especially for verification, judgment, and response."

Robots do not calm people down either. The Business Insider article notes that guards de-escalate conflicts and respond to mental-health crises, and it reports that San Antonio International Airport ended a trial of a Knightscope robot after about a month and cited trouble with crowds and badge checks.

Before you buy, ask each vendor who watches the alerts, how fast that person responds, and what happens when the robot is charging.

Starlife Bella is not a security robot

Starlife Bella is a humanoid service robot on a wheeled base, but it does a different job from the machines above. It does not patrol, detect intruders, record evidence or deter crime. If you need deterrence or patrol, one of the vendors above or a licensed guard company is the right place to go.

What Bella covers is the greeting and help part of a lobby job: it greets people, answers questions, gives directions, leads a visitor to the right place and tells the right staff member that someone has arrived. A trained robot pilot controls Bella live from a laptop, with AI assistance, so visitors talk with a real person. Bella is not autonomous, and Starlife supplies the robot pilot.

Bella can sit at a door or desk, greet visitors, ask whom they have come to see, and call a person for help. It speaks more than 30 languages with live translation both ways, works indoors only, and costs $10 to $20 an hour with the robot pilot and maintenance included. Starlife has run Bella in malls and healthcare settings, but it has not run Bella in an apartment or office lobby yet and is looking for a first pilot site. The lobbies page has more on the front desk role.

If the gap in your lobby is the welcome and the security is already covered, we can show you Bella. Book a demo.